Messenger for the Dead
by Petra Wove
Summary: Petra shouldn't have done a reading, she wasn't supposed to, and now her classmate is dead. When Petra goes after the number one suspect, a Demon called Nico, she soon uncovers a past involving her tribe, and their former slave masters.
1. Chapter 2

Messenger for the Dead

**CHAPTER TWO**

I felt stupid sitting there like a child waiting for my sister to come and pick me up.

_Mum would have been ashamed of me. _

That Monday, I'd told my teacher that I felt sick because I needed to get out of class. I shouldn't have lied but I just couldn't help it. I'd had enough of school.

Mum would have been_ disgusted. _

The nurse had regarded me like a disease. The old white woman, a human, had plonked me down on a hospital style bed, taken my temperature and then shuffled away to phone my emergency contact; Susie.

Susie was the second oldest in our family.

The nurses' office was cold. It had this funny smell which wasn't disinfectant and that was creepy because your mind came up with all sorts of weird explanations for it.

The only other time I'd been in the nurse's office was when I was four years old. It was my first day of Nursery School in Rainbow Heights, North London and the moment mum had said goodbye I felt awful. I felt like someone had come running up to me and stabbed me in the chest, repeatedly.

_It was that bad. _

When I was disconnected from mum, in that small prison they called a nursery, it was so sudden, so intense, that I'd collapsed. I'd woken up in the nurse's office, half-delirious, with the nurse having a panic attack because her training didn't cover real patients.

My family had never prepared me for how the Link could react. Not one of my family members had bothered to tell me how sensitive our connection was.

The Link was almost like an inbuilt 999 call which my family and I shared. I could sense my sister's emotions, I could also tell if they were in trouble and needed me.

It worked both ways. I'd raised the panic alarm and mum had come running, ready to destroy anything hurting her baby.

I watched my feet dangling over the edge of the fake hospital bed.

I couldn't have stayed in that classroom any longer. For weeks now, they'd been rumours going around about George's death. Somehow, in other words thanks to Bobbi, everyone knew about the reading.

Several times I'd heard the word 'voodoo' and 'witch' walking down the corridors of the All Girls School in Tulse Hill, Southeast London.

I could feel what the other girls were staying about me in my head, 'she's weird', 'did she even know George?', 'has she fallen out with Bobbi?', 'Bobbi can't even look at her'.

I'd always stood out from the rest of the girls but it was just more difficult now that George was dead and I'd done a reading on her. As far as I was concerned_, no-one just went to sleep and died. _

Teenagers notice the differences between species much quicker than adults do. My classmates clocked that I was different a long time ago. It wasn't the fact that I was black because let's face it, this was London. I was different because I felt different, I acted differently from them, and I never apologised for it.

Recently, the other girls had taken pity on me because of mum and dad.

But pity only lasts as long as a thread before its cut. You can only pretend to be human for so long before your muscles tire, your mouth slacks and the only thing left to do is be yourself.

I wasn't human, no matter how much I pretended to be, and George's death had something to do with the reading.

_So what now?_

I sat there, on that bed, sitting facing this mirror that didn't really fit in with the rest of the room; it was big enough to reflect my face and it showed me how horrible I must have looked to my classmates. Bobbi always said that I was pretty and wanted my dark eyes and heart shaped face, but I saw only puffy eyes and dry lips; I looked like I hadn't slept for days but I'd been sleeping just fine. I was just dreaming too much and it was making me exhausted.

When the news about George had spread through our small Secondary School on the hill-Bobbi and I had signed a silent contract not to talk to each other for a while. I could tell that Bobbi didn't think I had anything to do with George's death but the human was suspicious of me; I'd done a reading on Bobbi and that reading had scared her.

Now that I had no one to talk to, I couldn't explain to anyone that I thought George's death was suspicious.

As I'd left that classroom I'd blocked Bobbi out. She was in the corner of the room, copying notes from another girl who probably didn't have the right answers. I didn't want to know what Bobbi was thinking.

_That would hurt. _

It was ironic because I could hear a ticking clock somewhere and that sounded like an omen. There were coincidences, but I didn't believe in them, and I didn't believe that George's death was completely unrelated to me either.

The last day of term was fast approaching so I was lucky. I didn't have to see Bobbi again I didn't have to see any of my classmates again until exams.

The exam period was like a dark cloak; it descended on the city, instilling fear in all sixteen year olds who were caught in its net. My classmates would be too busy worrying about exams to remember about my weirdness on that day.

_George was dead_.

I knew I had to put that at the back of my mind until I could deal with it later and then... I would have to deal with it right? How could I not? Who else was going to?

"Pete! Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

I jumped like I'd been caught doing something bad.

Susie burst through the door. The building was obviously on fire because her head was going from side to side, looking for danger. If I didn't know any better I would have thought she was ready to throw a lightning bolt, like an X-Men.

_Susie didn't play_.

I'd forgotten about her. I'd forgotten about my own sister.

Through the Link I should have protected Susie from the thoughts that'd been racing around my body. It's possible for me to shield my emotions from my sisters if I don't want to raise the panic alarm. It's difficult, but I'd been doing that a lot lately. That's what I should have done the moment I'd chosen to get out of that classroom.

The nurse thought Susie was pretty, but she also thought that Susie was being dramatic. Susie morphed the nurses' frame with her own tall slender one; blocking her out was Susie's way of saying, you're not important I don't need to speak to you right now, but I'll let you know when you're needed.

Susie was dressed in a casual top and jeans with a leather jacket; looking stunning as always. At eighteen Susie was definitely the middle child the balance in the family. She was beautiful and that was no exaggeration. Susie was a combination between mum and dad and grandparents I'd never met and never would meet because we had no contact with our relatives in Africa.

It was kind of funny in a way; my first instinct had been to protect my eldest sister Elizabeth and not Susie.

Susie and I were closer. When I blocked Susie out, it was a fate worse than death.

_She hated it_.

"Are you hurt? Are you in pain?" Susie wanted to know.

My sister nearly stamped her foot as she said that. She had swung the door so hard that the handle bounced off the wall and nearly came back in on her.

In one smooth movement she held the door and positioned her body in such a way that the nurse didn't dare to come out.

Her natural beauty was graceful and it was fluid.

Susie had earned a modelling contract at the age of thirteen but she got bored with the travelling and champagne lifestyle. Susie wasn't interested in being pretty. I didn't really know _what_ Susie was interested in but it wasn't advertising pimple cream. She'd now started her A-Level exams at college and she was using a part-time job on Oxford Street as an excuse not to be at home.

"Answer me!" Susie demanded.

Susie often got mistaken for being much younger than she was. Mum said that was a black thing and not an unnatural thing. Her eyes bore into me but I never held answers on my face, _I wasn't human_.

"I don't feel well." It was the only thing I could think of.

Really small kids can get away with saying 'I'm sick' and then their parents switch to being all lovely and concerned.

It also stops them from being smacked.

Susie just narrowed her eyes even more and I thought is she going to hit me? Is she going to hit me in front of a stranger?

"You're unwell?" Susie screwed up her face. She was not impressed.

This was normal. This over-reaction when it came to anything related to me. If I wanted to live, I dared not tell my sisters about George, about the reading.

For now, _I was better off dealing with it on my own_.

"Really unwell." I clarified. "I need to go home."

Susie leaned her whole body away from me and straightened up. The nurse still cowered.

Susie's mouth softened and I felt only a slither of her muscles start to relax. Susie was an Empath. I'd looked it up on the internet once wondering why, out of all of us, she was more sensitive to the Link than any of us.

Susie had control over her thread on the Link. She toyed with it and I knew when she was doing it because it was almost like we shared the same lines of it. Sometimes, I felt her testing it out, seeing how far it stretched.

For me personally, I didn't think it was a good thing to be so connected like that. Now that our parents were no longer there, there was a gap, a huge ditch of emotion that Susie could easily fall into if she wasn't careful.

I'd never asked her about being an Empath and something told me that she wouldn't appreciate me asking either.

_Especially not that day_.

"Unwell?"

She was definitely questioning me, but I felt like she was using the word as code for something else. In the past, Petra being unwell was Petra sensing something or having bad dreams.

So I repeated it just for good measure.

"Yes Susie, I'm unwell."

"I think it's a bit of a shock for all the girls you see" that was the nurse. "When a classmate dies like that it's terrible..."

Susie crumpled. She strode towards me and she would have, for the first time in a long time, put her arms around me but something in my eyes must have stopped her. She faltered and the arms stayed where they were. Her mouth opened, but she said nothing.

I took advantage.

"Can I go home now please? I don't want to be here anymore."

Quick as a flash Susie took control. Little sister was grieving and little sister had to be spirited away.

There was suddenly a flurry of activity. Susie retrieved my school bag which I hadn't even noticed was in the room. She signed some release forms in another room so the school wasn't liable for anything that happened to me, now that I was in her custody.

Everyone was in class so the corridors were empty as we hurried through the old building and Susie led the way comfortably.

Susie had once attended the same school and I felt across the Link that she didn't like being back.

_I wondered why. _

Outside the front entrance Susie's car was haphazardly parked at the school gate. The vehicle had been a bone of contention for our parents who felt she could just as easily have used the car service that Elizabeth and I used on a daily basis.

For Susie, the red mini, not a standard size and could fit four passengers, represented freedom. She could roam about London and do what she pleased without mum and dad pinpointing her location.

_I was jealous._

Next to the Mini however was a black traffic warden, a human, who didn't look impressed with either the Mini or the parking. He was looking the vehicle up and down, deciding on where best to place the fine, once written out.

Susie hurried me through the student entrance, next to the gate, and was flashing the warden a smile.

That must have been a Jedi mind trick because the warden nodded at her and then decided to walk away.

I was shaking my head at my sister's powers of persuasion, squeezing into the front of the Cooper.

Would Susie buckle me in too?

London gets confused sometimes.

When it goes from one season to the next it's not always a smooth transition.

It was summer in London but autumn felt like it was fast approaching. The sky was still overcast, left over from the morning fog, and you needed a thick jacket when you went out.

My head was leaning on the passenger glass window of the Mini counting the sights as we zoomed by. The heater was on low.

Maybe I wasn't feigning sickness because I was tired, mentally tired and George was pushing on my thoughts trying to get in. I had no idea if I could reach out to her spirit and 'talk' to her and even planning that far ahead was scaring me.

I received messages in my dreams and I sometimes passed those messages on; that was it. The Internet was my only way of finding people, and then I had to use my instincts to check if I had the right person. I used a fake email account which I had to check every week.

Sometimes, the people I needed to reach out to would delete my messages, sometimes they wanted to know more, intrigued. I never gave them more because that was asking for trouble.

Trying to connect to a specific soul, like Bobbi, would be new ground for me. I didn't know if I wanted to dig up that ground.

I folded my arms across my chest.

We passed the middle class suburb of West Dulwich at high speed. I thought an unmarked police car would chase us down and throw all sorts of penalties our way, but there were no sirens. Susie didn't respect the authorities; she thought our taxes were going to waste but a lot of rich people thought that.

My own background was just as confusing as the weather.

Mum and dad had immigrated to London in the seventies. As far as I knew, they had come from a village near sub-Saharan Africa. It was a country like so many under British rule, until the 1930s. I didn't know which country we came from. It was all part of the mystery surrounding my family.

When I was younger, I made up all sorts of stories like...mum and dad fled their village because they were in love but their parents, who from different tribes of course, disapproved. Or, dad had worked for the government as a secret agent and now we were under some sort of witness protection programme. Mum had smiled at that and said I had stolen the former tale from Romeo and Juliet. Then she'd put me to bed.

But that's all mum did. _Smile_. She never confirmed nor denied. She never elaborated or gave me what I was looking for which was answers. Why was I psychic? Why did I get messages in my dreams? Why couldn't I see spirits when I was awake?

I respected dad for being more open; yes, we were different, yes other species existed and no, you can't involve yourself with them.

What didn't make sense however was why I'd always got singled out? Literally, the rules were different when it came to me. Petra, don't do this, Petra, don't do that. _Petra, why are you breathing?_

Susie looked at me. I didn't twitch; I just felt those eyes and I didn't bother to respond. I realised that my sister wasn't going to give up until she found out what was wrong with me.

Home was home, and home was lovely, but home was also a prison. We lived in a three-storey house in Brockley, Southeast London. It was a big Victorian building that was listed and resembled every other house on Guardian Road. Listed meant that any renovations which mum and dad wanted to do to the house, had to be approved by the British Heritage Council.

Susie told me a story once. She said that the house belonged to a coven of witches who set up a Women's Refugee. According to Susie, the witches kept their finances in order through illegal gambling and bootlegging. They lost the house when the authorities found out and then the building had to go back under the control of the council.

In that house I was constantly monitored. If I didn't wake up on time, someone came to check on me. If I didn't finish a meal I was made to convince my sisters that I wasn't ill. If I talked about messages from the other side I was put on lockdown and made to remove it from my head.

Maybe I'd done something really awful in my past and my parents were trying to protect me from it. Maybe I'd said something when I was really young that'd triggered alarm bells and sent the shutters down. It was more than possible that my parents had removed the memory and made Susie and Elizabeth swear a blood oath to suppress it. Did I have a right to know what I had done? Of course...and if I was right about my theory would it ever be revealed? Who knew?

The Mini Cooper slowed up as we reached Forest Hill. Forest Hill had been a working class suburb in the eighties but now because of its houses and local amenities the middle classes were moving back in. There was a central roundabout which always confused the buses and taxis that tried to navigate it. It didn't help that every two seconds the traffic light turned red.

Susie sighed as the car in front of us as refused to go at the right time. Susie wanted to run her hands through her hair but it was pulled into a loose bun.

"I've got to tell Elizabeth about today." She said to me suddenly.

I nodded my head.

Susie had her eyes on the car in front of her and occasionally used her mirrors to check what was going on around us.

"Have you got a headache? Do you want some aspirin?" She asked.

_Translation, don't keep blocking me out, I will get you in the end_.

"I haven't got a headache." I told her.

_Translation, I don't want to keep lying to you, but I will, if you keep pushing it._

"What do you want for lunch later?"

_Translation, if you don't eat something, we're going to have problems_.

"I'm not bothered. I'm not fussed." I replied.

"I have a friend at the house so just be nice and say hi to her when you get in please."

_That made me stop. _There was someone at the house? Someone who wasn't family?Where I couldn't do a double take, I took my head off the window and sank into my seat. If I was frowning I didn't realise, but Susie picked up on it.

Susie _never_ brought her friend's home. I didn't even think she had friends. My family may not be human, but we were in a separate category altogether, unsociable. It was normal to socialise. It was normal to build up a network of friends and then involve them in your family life and okay I wasn't the poster child for that but I'd certainly tried, I'd definitely tried with Bobbi. _I have a friend at the house so just be nice and say hi to her when you get in please._

That was odd in itself.

First of all, I had manners, Susie knew I had manners and why she was even questioning me, I didn't know. Secondly, why was she leaving this person alone and un-chaperoned? That meant they had more rights than me, and I wasn't happy with that.

"Okay." I simply said. That made Susie twitch. Good. If my sister was going to be undercover with me then I was going to be undercover with her. She'd been braced for questions now she had to relax when she didn't want to.

The traffic moved on.

What did I know about this friend of Susie's? I shook my head at myself. Scratch that, what did I know about George? George was far more important than Susie's mystery friend.

In the English school system you grew up with the same kids you entered the building with. In All Girls Schools that group is small. George, Bobbi and I had been together since we were eleven.

George and Bobbi had fallen in and out of their friendship. I had only really known Bobbi in the last year of school. Both girls were popular. In an All Girls Schools it's hard to gain popularity with the constant bitching and backstabbing but they'd both achieved it. Bobbi was liked because she was sociable, girls wanted to _be_ George because she was pretty.

It was odd to think I would never see George again. Death is so sudden and it doesn't always leave a trail of energy in the air. George's energy had moved over to the Land of the Dead and I could only access it if she allowed me to.

I knew nothing about the _way_ George had died only that it was 'tragic' because she went to bed one night and never woke up. That could easily have been a tragic accident and that didn't automatically mean that her boyfriend, her lover, had killed her...

...Nicholas that was his name.

Nicholas had felt wrong and wrong was my way of saying that he hadn't felt human. Humans have a very definite signature; it lies dormant and it's consistent with the way they live their lives. This energy can shift but it can't change.

Nicholas however was on a different level. That wouldn't have mattered much had it not been for the fact that it was steeped in negativity and made me want to cut all contact.

He was a demon, he had to be. And what did I know about demons? Not a lot, but anyone who'd felt like Nicholas had to be from that part of the unnatural world.

And then there was George herself. George hadn't felt entirely human and I wondered why it'd taken the reading to discover that. I was usually good at detecting a human and someone who was 'other'. George probably hadn't known she was sensitive to the other world because she hadn't appeared to recognise me as a real psychic.

George's energy had been lying just above the human signature. George was the kind of human that felt spirits around her, but probably rationalised it because her brain didn't want to accept the truth.

Why hadn't I felt that from her before? Was I getting worse at this whole psychic business? I doubted it. I bet the drugs George was taking, whatever they were, blocked her energy output. They certainly numbed her to what Nicholas was.

_Nicholas_.

I filed him under dangerous and then put him down on my list of priorities.

With home fast approaching, it was time for Susie's mystery friend.

Susie did an awkward parallel park. That's how she greeted our house.

I thought she was going to help me out the car, and scramble me up the stairs Secret Service style. But she didn't. She came around to the passenger side and held it open for me, calmly.

Catching the wrong end of the breeze, I hugged my school blazer tightly around me. I didn't have a watch on but it was still early in Southeast London. The day hadn't fully woken up. There was a corner shop at the end of the street where people were still buying their morning paper or travel tickets. They looked pre-occupied, pre-occupied, but free.

I loved our street. It was cosy and historic with its Victorian buildings and friendly atmosphere. The neighbours pretty much stayed the same, but I didn't mind that so much.

I pushed the gate open trying not to think about the spare key. Susie and I both trotted up the stairs and then she took over, turning her key in the blue, heavy oak door and then holding it open for me.

Susie's eyes were on me all the time.

I felt around for the new energy, it was faint, but it was there. The house was what I liked to call sensitive. It took on the energy of the people who lived it in. The energy upstairs was female and she was on the first floor of the house in my favourite part; the first floor living room. _The place I'd done the reading._

My eyes swept around taking in the place like a potential house buyer in mum and dad's original business; mum had been the interior decorator; dad had bought and sold the properties she worked on.

Dad had analysed the market so well he'd become Britain's first successful, black, property developer. Dad hated that title. I hadn't known why.

I observed our family home. With all the dark wood of the panelling that ran through the ground floor it was still light and airy and inviting. There was a dark oak staircase on the right which was original and the centre piece of the building. On the left was the ground floor sitting room which we never went into because it was not as homely as the one on the first floor.

Next to that was dad's office. Elizabeth had locked it and we never went in there now, not even to use his computer or take down a book from the shelves. Without dad being there, it felt wrong. The house keeper, Magda, kept it from going mouldy and becoming a museum piece. I think she missed my parents too.

Dad's office was connected to the large ground floor kitchen. It was directly in front of us and again, we rarely used it.

While Susie checked the mail which was on a side table by the door, and next to the coat rail, I thought about the garden beyond the kitchen. I thought about how mum had kept it half -jungle, half accessible through a whole year of graft and working with a skilled landscape gardener.

I didn't go in the garden anymore.

On automatic, I started climbing the stairs and Susie followed me, ripping open envelopes. The kind of mail we got were requests for money because people still thought mum and dad were alive and they'd handled all that directly. It freaked me out. Strangers could so easily get our home address, but I suppose that was no different to me looking people up on the Internet and giving them a message from the Land of the Dead.

Mum had decorated along the stairs with these different sized, black and white pictures of my sisters and I as babies. Mum preferred photographs to paintings; she said they captured energy better. The biggest photographs had all three of us together; we were usually fighting or looking sombre, no happy ones.

When you reached the landing, the first floor living room was on the right. On the opposite side was Susie and Elizabeth's bedrooms, they shared a bathroom. Continue up the stairs onto the second floor was my bedroom, another bathroom and then mum and dad's room, which was en suite. The attic had never been renovated because dad's plans to convert it had been rejected.

I walked into the living room and put my school bag by the door. Warm; that's how I would describe the heart of the home. There was no window but you never felt like the room was underground.

Mum had carefully chosen a coffee coloured three piece suit that was the main furniture of the room and stood relatively in the middle. I tried forgetting that George had once sat on that couch.

We rarely put anything on the coffee table in the centre, and made sure that the plants Mum had put in each corner of the room were kept alive. There was a small bookshelf in the far left of the room and no television. Mum and dad had restricted televisions because they said it wasn't part of our culture to be glued to them. Somehow I was the only one who'd never ended up with a television in my bedroom.

The living room was connected to a kitchen where we sat and had our main meals; it was large, completely modern and with a huge window looking out to part of the garden.

The energy, the new energy that I'd never come across before, was in there.

"We're back." Said Susie.

Susie was still on the mail as she went around me and into the kitchen. Whoever she was speaking to was out of the sight of the door but the conversation between the two of them was loud and clear.

"Is everything okay?" The voice was soft and youngish, the woman was also Scottish.

"I don't know. Petra's had some bad news..."

"Oh no...Is there anything I can do?"

"Come out and say hi, I'll put the kettle on and finish this. Petra, do you want tea?"

Tea? I wasn't allowed tea. Was this Susie trying to be nice? Probably. Was I suspicious of it? Yes. Did I care? No.

"Sure." I said.

Where Susie had disappeared, the other energy appeared. The woman was pretty. I decided that she was pretty not because she was blonde haired and blue eyed, she was pretty because her face was soft, her eyes were kind and she had good energy...it wasn't a human signature.

_Susie's friend was unnatural._

With new energies I usually labelled them as human or unnatural. This energy was above a human signature but I didn't think she was dangerous. She certainly wasn't a threat, _not the way Nicholas felt anyway_.

I said she was young, but she looked older than Susie, maybe mid-twenties? I wasn't good with age. The woman was tall and covered her frame with a blue blazer, a white top and blue jeans. Her feet were bare and her toenails were painted a pearl colour. Her perfume reminded me of a flower I never knew the name of; it masked a natural scent which was mostly soap and shower gel.

The woman came towards me; her hand outstretched. She showed perfect white teeth and dimples in both cheeks. I think teeth say a lot about a person. If you don't look after them, I start to question other areas of your hygiene. I turned fully to give her my attention and I shook her hand.

"Nice to meet you Petra." She said. "Sue has told me so much about you."

_Sue?_ I tried not raising my eyebrows.

Susie hated being called Sue. I wondered how _this one_ could get away with calling her that. Susie was short for Susannah. Elizabeth had a thing about people shortening their names in other words, she didn't like it. I didn't mind when Susie called me Pete because it sounded nice.

And what exactly had _Sue_ told this stranger about me anyway?

"Nice to meet you too. I'm sorry, Susie didn't tell me your name." I said to her.

"Xanthe" she said. "Spelt with an X. My parents were hippies. I thought you might like some brownies so I started making them. You're not one of those girls that's fussy about what they eat are you?"

"No...but...I don't really eat junk food."

She leaned her body forward as if she was going to impart some sort of wisdom. "Lucky for you this is better than junk food. They're delicious I promise. Should we sit?"

Did she just ask me to sit down on my own couch? I wanted to frown and do a double take but that would have looked rude.

I watched Xanthe as she moved. Xanthe was entirely at home in our living room and that told me that she was either one of those people that instantly felt comfortable in a new environment or that she'd been here before...funny how her energy left no imprint if that was the case.

Xanthe flopped down on the single couch closest to the kitchen and I took the double one. I felt a bit awkward in my school uniform as I wanted to be just as relaxed as Xanthe was. But I had to remind myself, someone I knew was dead and it wasn't the time to slow down and relax.

What were my instincts telling me about Xanthe? Well, it was important to her that I liked her but she wasn't fake. Xanthe felt that it would please Susie if we got on and Susie meant a lot to her.

The smile was still plastered on Xanthe's face as she went on. "I hear you're starting your GCSE exams? I hated exams at school, too much pressure and I hate pressure it's too dramatic. I suppose that's why I got a job at sixteen. Do you have a lot of exams?"

"Twelve subjects"

"Jesus." She whistled. Boys whistled, _like the boys who shouldn't have been in the house_. "It's unnatural to spread your brain over so many subjects. Can you even name them all?"

I paused for thought. "English Language and Literature, Maths, Triple Science, Religious Studies, Latin, French, History, Spanish and Drama." By the time I'd rattled through them all, I'd taken off my shoes.

"Which is your favourite?"

I thought about that for a moment. "Religious studies; there's a lot of arguing in those classes; the rest of the time its kind boring."

Xanthe shook her head. "Religion has never been my thing. I like mythology though; I like all those stories about Gods and half-human beasts." Then Xanthe switched gears. "Sue says you go to a good school. I wish I'd have gone to a good school. I'm sorry you're not feeling well. I'm sorry about your friend. How long had you known her?"

I was so surprised at the sudden turn in conversation. Xanthe wasn't probing it was just in her nature to ask questions when she wanted answers. "We all grew up together, from year seven."

"What's year seven?" Xanthe was genuinely confused.

"First year of secondary school." I explained. "You all start at the age of eleven or twelve, depending on your birthday."

Xanthe shook her head. "They called it something else when I was little. Nasty business to lose someone, especially when you're young. When did she die?"

"A few months ago."

"A few months ago?" That was Susie from the kitchen. "Why didn't you say anything?"

I shrugged. "I don't know" I told Susie.

"How did she die?" That was Xanthe.

I hesitated as if she'd asked me, _why did you do a reading when you weren't supposed to? _"She died in her sleep."

"Died in her sleep? Of what?" That was Susie from the kitchen again.

"I don't know" I said again.

"Sounds like you don't believe that." Xanthe wasn't asking me, she was telling me. "People don't really die in their sleep if you know what I mean."

_Yes, I do know what you mean_ I thought instead I asked her.

"What do you do for a living? If you don't mind me asking?"

"I was a shop keeper for the longest because there wasn't much work in the village I grew up in. So I moved to Edinburgh when I was eighteen and that's when I trained as a private detective."

My eyes widened. Here I was with a death on my hands and life had presented me with a private detective. This was why I didn't believe in coincidences.

"I've never met a private detective before." I admitted. "Are female ones rare?"

Xanthe shrugged slim shoulders. "I don't suppose there are that many here. There are a lot of them in America but I suppose America has everything. Will you get a summer job?"

Xanthe's mind worked fast. Me? Work? She wasn't serious. Elizabeth and Susie would never let me out of their sights, long enough. The thought had never occurred to me either since Elizabeth had suggested an internship at the family business. There she could keep an eye on me and persuade me to fall in love with bricks and mortar the way mum and dad had; highly unlikely.

I didn't know what I was going to do with my summer but work was far from my mind. I had to get through exams. I had to ignore Bobbi. I had to deal with George's death.

I shook my head at Xanthe. "Probably not." I told her. "Do you have a license for your job?"

She blinked. I watched her shift position in her seat and decide on something before answering me. I couldn't detect lies as easily as I would have liked, but I could detect a change of vibration in her voice. I felt-Xanthe didn't want to lie to me but she didn't want to give me the truth either. _Weird_.

"You...have to have a license in this country yes. I have a license, but a lot of what I do is...not recognised by the law. If you see what I mean."

"Like cash in hand?"

She laughed. It was a nice laugh, not throaty like the way George had laughed on my couch. It was clear and warm like Xanthe meant it. "Cash in hand. I like that. Yes, I do a lot of cash in hand jobs."

"So it can be dangerous?"

"Oh yes." She nodded her blonde head with honesty. "You never know what's coming around the corner and that's why I wanted Sue..."

"Petra do you want milk and sugar in your tea?" That was Susie. Good timing since my head was buzzing with what? You wanted Susie to do what? What did my sister have to do with the dangerous business of being a P.I? Susie worked in an expensive clothes shop on Oxford Street. That's where Susie worked.

"Yes please."

"Yes what?"

"Yes to milk _and_ sugar please."

Mum drank her tea like that. She used to have at least ten cups a day. Mum was addicted to tea, and dad told me that's why he didn't want me getting into the habit of it.

_Addictions were the pitfalls of humans_.

"You met Susie through work?" I started.

"Yes."

That was a blunt yes, no room to manoeuvre.

"Petra" that was Susie again.

"Yes?"

"Why don't you get out of your uniform? I'll keep the tea warm for you don't worry."

That was an order. "Okay." I said reluctantly. "Excuse me" I said to Xanthe.

Xanthe smiled.

I got up from the couch and retrieved my shoes, annoyed that Susie had cut me short. Xanthe's eyes were on me as I exited the living room. I wondered what her gift was.

I wondered whether she knew, we were just like her.

I don't need to be psychic to know when I'm being talked about.

Even with my bedroom door shut, and Susie and Xanthe talking in hushed voices, their vibrations were on the same level.

My bedroom was one of the largest in the house. I loved the way it was always flooded with light and faced the street so I knew what the day was going to be like. The window was the focal point and I used to sit on the window ledge and read story books until it got dark. Facing the window then, I tugged myself out of my uniform and dropped pieces on the bed which stood between us.

The bed and window were the most impressive features of the room. Tacking pictures to the wall of random film stars was not my thing. The walls were a mute off white colour and the only thing which hung was a mirror which faced out from the bed. I liked antique furniture, the bed was antique, the large wardrobe to the right of me was even older, and so too was the desk and chair in the corner which housed my laptop.

Putting my school uniform in the wash basket in my cupboard, I decided to change into jeans and a t-shirt and then settled down at my desk. I flipped open the red laptop that was a thirteenth birthday present from mum. The machine's engine started up and it whirred to life going through its checking procedures. As I pulled my hair into a neater ponytail, I had to remind myself to clear the history once I was done searching the Internet. I wouldn't put it past either of my sisters to check my search history and then cross-examine me about it afterwards.

They'd done it before.

When the screen came alive, I typed in _Georgina Harmond-White _and_ Death _in the same sentence. I should have done this earlier but I wasn't expecting to get anything concrete. If George's death had been ruled as natural then what were the chances of me finding a newspaper article that said 'Teenager dies in suspicious circumstances. Police holding her boyfriend as prime suspect'.

And wouldn't you know it? There wasn't anything like that. Instead I had snippets from social networking sites which blessed George's life and expressed how sad it was that she'd died at a young age. There was the odd comment about her taking drugs 'just say no man, why didn't she understand?' someone had even done a rap about it, but there was no mention of Nicholas.

For a moment I was sad that George's life hadn't made more of an impact. It was sad that she and I had spent the last four years of our school life together and yet, we were strangers. I killed the laptop knowing exactly what I was trying to avoid.

To connect with George in the spirit world was sending alarm bells ringing through my head. Spirits came to me in my dreams and that's it. I'd always assumed that I wasn't strong enough to connect with ghosts in my waking life, and that's why they came to me when my defences were down. Sometimes I remembered the conversations I had with them, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I didn't even know I was speaking to a spirit until I woke up and realised that it wasn't a normal dream.

Spirits came to me, I didn't go to them. To try and summon George well, what did that even look like? Was there some sort of incantation I had to do? Could I look it up on the internet?

It was times like this that I resented the way my family had conducted themselves. I should have been able to go to them and ask for help like 'I need to contact a ghost, what's the best way of doing that?' and then Susie would have been like 'no problem, it's dead easy what you have to do is...' But _that_ in itself was a dream.

When it came to the Land of the Dead my family shut down.

But for all I knew George might have been resting peacefully. What was I hoping? That she would tell me that Nicholas had killed her and I was her only hope in bringing him to justice? I didn't think it worked that way.

Nicholas wasn't human so perhaps I needed to find out _what_ he was before I went rooting around in George's murder.

Unnatural things came in many different shapes and forms. Demons were the most common. They were the ones humans knew about but rarely thought they actually existed. I had read up on species like vampires and witches, I just didn't know what elements of their stories were true.

Also, perhaps I needed to come at this from Nicholas's point of view. I had touched his energy signature and it had scared me. Touching it through George meant that I could find it again if I wanted to. If Nicholas had done something to cause George's death, then maybe I could see it through his eyes and then what? I told myself.

"Petra! Your tea's getting cold!" Susie shouted up.

"Coming!" I shouted back.

Either way; whether I tapped into George's energy or threw myself a curve ball and connected with Nicholas, I was on dangerous ground.

Unnatural things fed on people like me.

Nicholas would be no exception.

Page **13** of **13**


	2. Chapter 3

Messenger for the Dead

**CHAPTER THREE**

Elizabeth was making a face at me.

It was almost like my sister was a TV doctor deciding what to do about an infection; treat the leg? Or cut it off entirely. Did my sister know that aged her? All that seriousness and pouting; it distracted you from the fact that she was so pretty.

_I blinked slowly, very slowly. _

When the lids came over my eyes and the darkness followed-Elizabeth disappeared. Out of all of us, Elizabeth resembled mum the most. The image of her face stayed behind my eyelids. She had mum's long hair mum's eyes.

I was still in a haze when I saw the world again. Elizabeth came back into focus.

She was wearing her hair down, it was loose, and it framed her face perfectly. She was bending down towards me, and there was some concern in her face, but nothing for me to think, _now_ _why are you looking at me like that?_

There was this glowing light around her like a Hollywood angel. Elizabeth was dressed in a white blouse buttoned up all the way to her neck. It looked like something mum would have worn to the office.

_Warm, safe and loved; that's how I felt. _

"Morning", my greeting was absent-minded. Mum used to go mad if you didn't say good-morning or at least acknowledge her as soon as you woke up. In my mind, good-morning was one of those dead greetings that didn't mean anything anymore but it made them feel alive.

Elizabeth put a hand to my forehead, her hand felt cool. She was working something out in her head. I could almost see the calculations going back and forth but they were too difficult for me to work out.

"What were you dreaming about?" Elizabeth wanted to know. Her voice wasn't harsh but it wasn't soft either. I don't think Elizabeth knew how to appear friendly. She thought acting or pretending was a waste of time; a waste of human time.

Dreaming? I frowned. Why was she asking me about my dreams? If I'd been dreaming, it couldn't have been a psychic dream or the images would have been floating at the surface of my mind trying to get out. And it was daytime after all...

_Uh-oh. _

I blinked, quickly this time. _Petra_, I started in on myself, why _are you lying on the kitchen floor?_

The blinking got worse, _why do you think it's the morning when you were just having dinner with your sisters and this new woman, Xanthe? Don't you know anything?_

I moved my head from side to other, feeling the cold surface of the kitchen floor. Not being one to press the panic button, I tried to reason with the part of my brain that wanted to yell, why am I on the kitchen floor!

The angel light around Elizabeth was actually the chandelier hovering above. She must have been putting her back out the way she was leaning over me, trying to find the crazy in my face.

I moved my head slowly to the right, taking in Susie and Xanthe. Susie was leaning with her knee on a chair to the right of Elizabeth. I couldn't read the expression on her face but there was definitely concern there. Xanthe was standing beside her and she had a hand on her shoulder which was kind of intimate?

Xanthe looked as if she'd seen a ghost.

Their energies were really near, but they were trying to keep out of the way, probably on Elizabeth's instruction. I was centre stage in a play I hadn't even been aware I was staring in. I felt like an idiot.

The dining table chairs had been moved out of the way so my small frame could be accommodated on the kitchen floor. I was already sick of acknowledging that I was on the kitchen floor but it had to be said.

"What happened?" I asked Elizabeth.

Elizabeth flicked a look at Susie. I hoped I hadn't done something weird; Xanthe deserved some time to get her feet under the table before she was exposed to my gift. What _had_ I done? A psychic vision wouldn't have knocked me out so what was it?

Elizabeth stared at Susie as if to say 'I'll handle this' like a General pulling rank. Her eyes were clouded and I was unable to read anything they were saying. If I reached towards the Link my sisters would shut down and I wouldn't be able to find out anything.

So I didn't.

I couldn't remember when Elizabeth had come home. The last thing I remembered was Susie making me set the table, telling both Xanthe and I that a miracle was about to happen, not me ending up on the floor, but Elizabeth coming home on time dinner. But actually settling down for dinner? I couldn't remember doing that. The kitchen smelt of chicken and potatoes... when had Susie managed to prepare that?

It was just my luck that I had missed the whole drama of Elizabeth coming home and finding Xanthe. I wondered what sort of reaction Xanthe had gotten from Elizabeth. Had she been like me? Had she been wondering why, all of a sudden, Susie had brought a friend home? I wondered if they _did_ know each other why _I_ didn't know that.

It was all so disturbing; so, twilight zone. A whole evening of my life had been wiped out and there was no chance of me getting it back. To be honest, I was surprised my sisters were taking this so well. There were no helicopters circling overheard no SAS parachuting through the window.

Elizabeth cleared her throat, getting my attention. Without reaching for any emotion she told me. "I think you fainted. Perhaps I should have believed you when you said you were unwell?"

Fainted? When? At dinner? _Nah_. So why had she been asking me about my dreams then? That wasn't the first thing you said to someone when they woke up after fainting. What had I said _before_ I'd ended up on the kitchen floor? And why had I ended up on the floor?

Fainting wasn't in my character.

"Can you help me up?" I asked her.

"Maybe you should lie down for a second." That was a command not a suggestion. I felt silly lying on the floor. I didn't think there was anything wrong with me. I didn't feel sick I didn't feel queasy I just felt-I'm on the floor and I need to get up.

"Honestly, I would feel much better sitting up." I said again.

Susie looked at Elizabeth for her orders.

Elizabeth thought for a second and then decided, okay, the world isn't going to end if Petra got her dignity back. Seconds later, she and Susie had me into a sitting position. I was slumped by a bottom cabinet like a rag doll positioned on a dodgy shelf. Xanthe appeared with some water. I didn't think I needed it.

The three of them watched me as I put the cup to my lips.

"Maybe we should call a doctor?" That was Susie.

We had a family doctor; a human. His name was Doctor Gibbs and he was an old white man. He had these piercing blue eyes which had a wealth of knowledge but never told you much. He didn't like speaking; a doctor that didn't want to communicate with his patients, the irony. No one was more surprised than me when Doctor Gibbs had come to our parent's funeral. I didn't think he liked us. But he came, and he appeared upset.

Elizabeth relieved the tension in her back by sitting up straight. She put a hand to my forehand again and looked...annoyed when she came away with nothing.

"She doesn't have a temperature", that was Elizabeth's way of saying no, the doctor can stay out of this one. She regarded me with those eyes again. "How do you feel?" she asked me.

I shrugged. I drank more of the water; it was warm and tasted of metal. How did I feel? _Weird_ that's how I felt. Imagine an afternoon of _your_ life had been ripped out of _your_ memory, how would _you_ feel?

I wasn't prone to illness and the last time I felt bad was George's energy and her demon boyfriend and yet...this time I'd ended up, splattered, on the kitchen floor.

Like an idiot.

Elizabeth didn't ask stupid questions. Asking me what I'd been dreaming about was significant. Her first question should have been are you alright? Is there anything I can do? I sipped some water again.

"Okay, I think-I'm okay. I feel okay" I told her.

"Well", Elizabeth flicked a look at Susie.

Those two spent far too much time speaking with their eyes; especially when it came to each other.

"You won't be going to school for the rest of the week." Elizabeth said.

"This is the last week of term." It was meant to sound like a protest, but it came out like a statement. If I didn't protest, then my sisters would have been suspicious. Why don't you want to go to school? They'd ask. What's wrong? Are your school mates calling you a witch?

Well you see, I'd reply, all innocence, I did a reading when I wasn't supposed to and now the girl I did a reading for is dead and everyone at school thinks I'm a witch because they can't tell the difference between witches and psychics, and I think George died of unnatural causes and her demon boyfriend has something to do with it funny huh?

"I would have hoped you haven't left your whole year down to one week." Said Elizabeth. "I'll make sure your teachers send you the work and you can make a revision calendar."

A revision calendar, of course!

Elizabeth planned her while life in a pocketbook diary. Every hour of her day was consumed by paperwork and more paperwork. She liked the regime. Once, I suggested that she should go and work for the Government, but dad said they needed people who didn't do their job so well.

"Should I put the kettle on?" That was Xanthe.

Elizabeth nearly sighed, I watched her take an intake of breath and then she held it there-before letting it out slowly, very slowly. If I didn't know any better I would have thought that Xanthe had annoyed her in some way. But tea was hardly a crime, it was just British.

"I think that's a good idea" Susie supported her friend.

Elizabeth gave her a look.

"Petra doesn't drink tea." The voice that came out of Elizabeth was flat and yet the vibrations underneath it were not. Seriously? Where we going to argue over tea?

"Petra had tea earlier, when she came home." Susie ratted me out. I let out a small whimper which no one paid attention to.

This time Elizabeth sighed quite openly.

We all watched Elizabeth as she got to her feet in one swift movement and put her hands over her chest. Elizabeth was wearing a skin-tight dark skirt and high heels shoes. She towered over me as her energy went out.

The Link was bouncing between the three of us and it wasn't happy.

Not to be outdone, Susie removed her knee from the chair and stood upright. My money was on Elizabeth. She stood about a foot taller than Susie and she never lost a fight.

Xanthe took a step back; I should have warned her that when Elizabeth and Susie disagreed it was worse than a typhoon.

"Petra shouldn't be drinking tea." Elizabeth started.

"Well" she was using Elizabeth's favourite word. "Since Petra is still alive, I think we can safely assume its fine."

"She shouldn't be drinking tea." Elizabeth reiterated.

Susie said. "It wasn't a murder attempt."

"That's not the point."

"That _is_ the point."

"If that _was_ the point," Elizabeth was losing patience. "I wouldn't waste time talking to you about it now would I."

"Which means?"

Elizabeth wanted to roll her eyes. "When we make a rule in this house Susannah, what do we do?"

"Oh come on"

"When we make a rule in this house Susannah", Elizabeth repeated. "What do we do?"

"We follow it Elizabeth." Susie was losing her own patience. "Even when the people who made that rule are no longer here."

My mouth flew open into a silent 'O'. Even Xanthe, new to the family and who wouldn't be coming back for dinner anytime soon, arched her eyebrows.

Susie had crossed some sort of line. Yes, we really arguing about tea and no, I couldn't quite believe it. I shook my head at the both of them.

_My sisters were crazy._

"Petra's had a tough time lately, what with her _friend_ _dying_..." Susie started. "Perhaps we can relax for one night?"

"I'm sorry about your friend." Elizabeth said directly to me, and then she turned back to Susie. "But I still don't see what that has to do with the price of fish."

"No one eats fish in this house Elizabeth, but we'd all like a cup of tea now and then"

"That was an expression."

"I know."

Elizabeth huffed. "Maybe if you spent more time at University, and less time roaming around the city you would understand what I was saying to you."

"I don't want any tea thank you." Neither of them acknowledged me when I spoke. I looked at Xanthe, but she didn't look as if she was ready to add her two cents.

In my head I thought, _coward_.

"Why don't I clean the dinner plates?" Xanthe offered. "Petra, why don't you go and lie down?"

At the mention of my name, Elizabeth and Susie looked at me. You'd have thought I'd re-appeared onto the stage after a long interval. For a long time they both just looked at me, and then they looked at each other.

Surely they weren't going to drag this on?

In silent agreement, they both helped me to my feet, slowly. Elizabeth smoothed down my t-shirt and jeans, Susie fixed my ponytail. I told them I didn't want to lie down and they allowed me to go into the living room and sit.

Elizabeth, Susie and Xanthe, somehow worked around each other to clear dinner away and I heard the kettle being flicked on.

Imagine the ice in that room.

With no television, and not fancying retrieving my school books, I sat there like a lemon, once again, and just let my thoughts drift.

_What were you dreaming about? _The thought was still going around in my head. Why had Elizabeth asked me that?I used to have really bad dreams like, worse than thinking you're being chased by some serial killer and they were gaining you, fast. I could remember those dreams as far back as my memory would allow me to go.

They'd been nightmares; full-blown nightmares that had often left me tearful and afraid to go to bed. I hadn't had one in years but they still haunted me. When I thought back to what they'd been made up of; it was difficult to describe. They didn't have some big, bad monster in them. They didn't really have anyone else except me.

Visually, they were dark, very dark. Imagine being completely surrounded by darkness; an everlasting tunnel of darkness that I thought would swallow me up if I didn't keep ahead of it. _If I didn't keep going_. I was myself but yet I wasn't myself, I was floating and yet floating suggests that you're not moving and I was.

In those dreams, one thing was clear enough, I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I had to _keep_ going like I was being compelled to.

It wasn't a death dream. Humans sometimes dreamt about their own end, the time when they would meet their marker in a halo of white light. I wasn't dead I was alive, very much alive and I had a destination.

Normally I used to wake to find mum or dad soothing me, telling me that everything was going to be alright. They hadn't explained what I'd been doing, or _saying_, in my sleep but the looks on their faces told me that it wasn't good...

I could have fainted because I hadn't eaten all day. But my eating habits were bad at the best at the best of times; it had never caused me to pass out before so why now? It was too odd to be normal.

I sighed.

Aside from getting my sugar levels up_, I really needed to talk to Bobbi. _How could I avoid it? I'd decided on this course of action the moment I'd left school that day. It'd become another thought shoved to the back of my mind like, my parents death, but it had to be done.

Bobbi knew George to some degree. She could tell me more about her life than any psychic reading could. George was dead and someone had to do something about it.

The reading had been such a frenzied mess I hadn't had the time or the thought to pick up on whether Bobbi had any idea about Nicholas.

A plan was forming in my head but I needed to keep it simple...it was something along the lines of, talk to Bobbi, find out about Nicholas, and then contact George's spirit as a last resort...if I could even do that.

There was a phone in mum and dad's bedroom. The only other phone was in Dad's study and I wasn't going in there. I knew Bobbi's number off by heart because she was the only person I called.

Elizabeth came in with some tea. It wasn't a victory to Susie because she was administering the cup herself, and it only contained half the liquid Susie had given me. I accepted it gratefully thinking actually, I could see myself getting used addicted.

Elizabeth said something about work, what else would you start doing at the end of the day when that's all you'd been doing? And then she disappeared out of the room.

Moments later Susie and Xanthe came to sit with me; or babysit I wasn't sure. Xanthe took up the chair she originally had earlier in the day and since I was sat further down the long couch, Susie sat in between us.

Susie asked me. "How are you feeling?"

I put the steaming mug down on the coffee table. I was already getting sick of that question. "I'm okay. I don't know what to tell you. I don't remember fainting and I feel fine. Is Elizabeth mad?"

Susie raised an eyebrow. Xanthe tucked her feet under her. Susie was leading the discussion.

"Elizabeth isn't mad." She said carefully. "Elizabeth doesn't like change."

"Should I shut the door?" That was Xanthe.

I couldn't decide whether that was rude or not. It was Elizabeth's house and she was entitled to get angry over tea if she wanted to. Xanthe was just a guest.

Susie shook her head. "It's fine. Elizabeth can hear if she wants to." That was Susie's way of supporting her big sister. "Why didn't you tell us about your friend dying?"

Susie's body was positioned so that she was facing me more than Xanthe. She had one leg tucked under her and the gesture was meant to appear un-threatening and it was except for the fact that I felt like I was being tag teamed.

Xanthe was trying to appear docile. Susie was just playing the concerned sister. I made a face; I wanted them to think I was concentrating carefully about the answer before I gave it to them.

"I didn't..." I tried to find the words. "...want to talk about it. It was a bit of a shock."

"When did she die?"

"Months ago."

Susie paused. "So they've had the funeral? You didn't want to go?"

"No..."I said slowly. I tried to explain, "She wasn't a...close friend. I don't really have anyone except for Bobbi. She and Bobbi started spending time together."

"Were you jealous?"

I shrugged. "That's what it's like, especially at that school. People fall in and out of friendships all the time. You know, you went there."

Susie raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement. She looked like she was thinking about specific memories when she spoke again. "I know. I couldn't be doing with all of that...but maybe you should have gone to the funeral."

"I've had enough of funerals." That was as blunt as I ever was with Susie. I shouldn't have played that card but I didn't need her backing me into a corner. She was suspicious of me, but she wasn't suspicious enough to raise the alarm.

Susie nodded slowly. "I really think you should go somewhere else for your A-Levels. That school isn't right."

Somewhere in the corner of my mind-I laughed. "Elizabeth said no." I said flatly.

"Did you state your case?

"That wouldn't make a difference?"

"She's not that bad."

I didn't say anything. I felt Susie wanted to smile-but she didn't. She just continued looking at me, not giving anything away. "You're very perceptive", she said. "But you need to get the full story _before_ making judgements about people."

What did that mean? Who was I judging? I didn't judge Elizabeth. Elizabeth was just Elizabeth and we all accepted it. And what was the full story? What did she mean by that? I was building up a bank of questions and someone needed to help me with the answers.

Susie wasn't using the Link. She was playing this one all on her own. I wish I knew what it was like for her to be an Empath. With all the things I'd read on the internet, it was difficult to know what was true and what were guesses. For someone who could tune into other people's feelings, Susie spent an awful lot of time not displaying any of hers. Maybe that was a by product of her gift?

"What was she like, this friend of yours? What was her name?"

_Remember the tea Petra? You can't let her find out about George's reading. Not if you like breathing. _

"Her name was George. George White. Like I said, I didn't know her very well. But she was popular."

Susie decided. "We should send something to her parents."

"The school did that. We all signed a card."

"So she died in her sleep?"

"That's what the teachers said."

"In her sleep?" Susie said again, not believing it. "Did she have a medical issue?"

"What?"

"Was she healthy?"

"No-one said anything like that."

"And she was sixteen? Like you? Of course she was, she was in your class."

"Uh-huh."

"Was she on drugs?"

"Drugs? Why would you say that?" I hoped the weird note in my voice went unnoticed.

Susie frowned. "Teenagers take drugs Petra."

"Not all of them."

"So she didn't."

"What?"

"So she didn't take drugs?"

I was glad my skin was dark. It was good cover. Susie couldn't see my face growing hot.

_God, my sister was good_.

Did George take drugs? According to me she did. I was trying not to squirm in place but I did. Susie didn't have to exchange a look with Xanthe for me to know that the two of them were communicating somehow.

If I lied and said no, George wasn't taking drugs, she could tell that I was lying. If I said yes, George was taking drugs she'd ask me how I knew that.

Suddenly I was wishing we _had_ shut the door on Elizabeth.

My pause was too long. I'd timed out. "None of the teachers said anything like that." I tried to recover but it was more like slipping and then falling. "And they're always going on about the dangers of it."

Susie was looking at me hard. She wasn't a fool. "Yeah, teachers don't know the half of what goes on at that school. What did the rest of you know?"

"The rest of us?"

"Your classmates. _Gossip_ Petra."

"I don't listen to gossip."

"But you can't avoid it."

"Susie..."

"Petra Louise Wove." Susie said, very calmly. "Was George taking drugs, and did you know about it?"

_Uh-oh, that was a direct question. _

In our family, when you're asked a direct question, you have to answer it. It was another unwritten rule in an unofficial rule book. I used to make a note of Wove Family Laws, but now there were too many to keep track of.

I frowned. How had I come to a dead end so quickly? What was I supposed to do? Lying was an option if you were human and were good at it. But I wasn't human. I had the Link. The lie would reverberate across the family Link and _both_ my sisters would detect it...and I would be in so much trouble...and I would have to tell them about the reading...and I'd have to tell them about Nicholas..._so I went into defensive mode_.

"Yes, she was taking drugs. And no I don't know what types of drugs she was taking. I have no idea. If you're asking me if _I'm_ involved in drugs then that's a different question..."

"Don't be silly..."

"So what do you want to know?"

"Take a different tone with me Petra that's number one." Susie breathed. "Number two, I have a right to know who you're hanging around with, especially where drugs are involved. Do you understand me?"

Normally I would have been embarrassed; I was being told off in front of a stranger. But Xanthe kept a straight face, it was almost as if she was used to Susie's mood swings. Maybe she was?

Wanting to sink further into my seat, the chair groaned its response as if to say, I'm not designed to be your little hide out. Maybe I should have stayed at school after all.

It was safer there.

"If you're asking me if drugs were involved in her death," I wanted to bury the discussion once and for all "then how could I know that? I don't know."

"Drink your tea Petra, before it gets cold." That was Xanthe. If Susie hadn't turned in her direction I wouldn't have thought she'd spoken either. Xanthe smiled at me and it was genuine.

"I hate cold tea." Xanthe added. You would have thought the thing was laced with truth serum the way the both of them watched me take sips and then place it back on the table. I was over this discussion. Phoning Bobbi was a priority and then I could figure out the next steps in my amateur investigation.

"I need to phone Bobbi." I told them.

"Who?" Susie's eyes were trying to burn a hole in my skin. She relaxed them slightly, suddenly realising who I was speaking about. "Oh yes. Don't you think it's a little late for that?"

_Well since you don't allow me to have a mobile phone and I'm not allowed to use the Internet much..._

"No, she'll be up. I'll apologise to her parents for the late call. She'll want to know that I'm okay."

"I can do that."

"Let her speak to her friend." Xanthe told Susie. "You were young once and you still are."

Susie made a face at her and I would have thought she was being playful but Susie was never playful. She half-nodded and then got into a discussion with Xanthe which was designed to stop me from butting in.

I rinsed my tea off as quickly as I could. I promised Susie I wouldn't stay on the phone too long and that I would have a shower before bedtime.

Honestly, was she going to give me a glass of warm milk and biscuits?

Could I have tea instead?

I wasn't like my sisters.

For me, my parent's bedroom wasn't a painful memory. It was just a nice clean space-no longer occupied by its previous owners. In my eyes, it still retained its grandeur, still had good energy.

Mum and dad's bedroom was the largest room in the house. When I entered it that night, it was always the photographs that immediately hit me.

There was a recent picture of Elizabeth, Susie and I which hung above the four poster bed on the right; the bed faced the window which looked out onto the street. The photograph was a large family portrait of the five of us on a beach in Wales, a family holiday.

It had been a nice day. We had woken early from our rented cottage in the woods and headed down to the beach to catch the sunrise. A passing dog walker had offered to take the photograph; his friendly, female boxer had jumped in the shot at the last minute and I had held onto her collar as the camera went 'click'.

Mum and dad had said that in Africa, people didn't really have pets, if they did; they lived outside and that was called wildlife.

The rest of the photographs started near the en suit bathroom on my right and went all around the off white walls, all neatly spaced out. Again, they were black and white prints of different sizes and they gave the room a Royal feel.

Magda, our housekeeper, kept the room smelling clean and fresh. In the aftermath of my parent's death I had taken to sleeping on their four poster bed. I didn't think it made me feel closer to my parents; I knew that their energies had moved on and was now in the Land of the Dead. But the place still smelt of mum's perfume and that comforted me. I was now back sleeping in my own bedroom but I think Magda liked the practise of keeping the room the same.

There were built in wardrobes in the far left corner which was a small room in itself. I used to go into there and hide just to read books or play with imaginary friends...and they _were_ imaginary friends because spirits never came to me in the daytime. I liked the large, full-length mirror in front of the wardrobe entrance; there was something about a reflection that was other-worldly and there was mum's dressing table next to that.

Taking up the white, cordless telephone on the side table, I dialled Bobbi's number and then laid down on the bed, facing the ceiling with one leg crossed over the other.

"Hi Mrs Cousin." I said brightly as the phone rang through. "It's Petra Wove. Sorry for the late call." Mrs Cousin answered on the second ring.

I'd only met Bobbi's mother on a couple of occasions but I thought I had her figured out. Mrs Cousin was the Head of some women's charity in Kent and also volunteered with animal shelters when she wasn't baking cookies for the elderly. A devout Christian, Mrs Cousin had the appearance of a stereotypical missionary, white, pale and full of good intentions but she had some conservative view on things. She'd had Bobbi in her late thirties, when her husband was touching forty. I thought Mrs Cousin was aging prematurely.

I could feel her vibrations turn decidedly cooler as I identified myself. Did she believe that I was as devilish as Bobbi had portrayed me? No, she thought teenagers were prone to exaggerating and she didn't think it was particularly Christian of her only child to say that. Was she suspicious of my friendship with Bobbi? Sure, despite the fact that I came from money and a good upbringing, if anyone was going to lead Bobbi astray then it was going to be me.

_How little she knew._

"Petra good evening. How are you?" Mrs Cousin was the type of person that tried to hide her Southeast London accent. I didn't understand why.

"I'm good thank you Mrs Cousin. Again I'm so sorry about the time I'm calling. I'd understand if it's not appropriate to speak to Bobbi at this hour."

Mrs Cousin warmed at good manners. She wanted go to heaven. I wondered what Mrs Cousin would do if an unnatural thing presented itself to her -and her Christian values. Would she still believe in her maker then?

"Bobbi has just gone to bed, but I doubt she's asleep. I'll get her up for you my dear." She returned my good manners with more good manners.

When she placed the phone down, I got snippets of images in my mind's eye, like flipping through the library of a digital camera. Mrs Cousin was making her way up the stairs of their semi-detached house in Forest Hill, to the first floor. She knocked politely on Bobbi's bedroom door before going in. Bobbi complained that she was asleep, Mrs Cousin told her daughter not to be rude.

Bobbi really didn't want to speak to me, but arguing with her mother didn't seem worth it. Mrs Cousin wondered off to another part of the house. Bobbi stomped past her.

Bobbi was therefore alone when she sat down on the last step of the staircase and picked up the receiver.

"What do you want?" The vibrations in her voice were so cold; I held the phone away from my ear, counting to five before returning it.

Humans knew so little about their energies and how _loud_ they were compared to their normal speaking voices. Bobbi wasn't angry with me, she was just confused. She was still trying to make sense of George's death. She missed the one-sided conversations we used to have because at least someone was listening to her.

"I won't take up too much of your time." I was trying to be tactful.

Bobbi and her mother were different when it came to values. Mrs Cousin placed so much faith in good manners; Bobbi respected you, the less you gave of them.

"You can cut the crap", she half-bit back. "Mum isn't listening and dads dead to the world in that fucking shed of his. What do you want?"

_Okay_.

"My sister's been asking me a lot of questions about George..." That was kind of true.

"So?" Bobbi stiffened at the mention of George's name.

"I think". I tried again. "Susie's got it into her head that I knew about the drugs..."

"But you _did_ know about the drugs." Bobbi corrected me. "You said it in the reading. Or were you pretending?"

"You know I wasn't."

"I think it's flipping weird that's what I think. No one should know that kind of stuff."

"Did you know about the drugs?" I pulled the conversation back.

I felt Bobbi shrug. "That was her business and it's definitely none of yours. What does it matter now anyway?"

"Well-considering she was young and healthy, don't you think it's a bit weird that she just died like that?"

Bobbi rolled her eyes at me. "People die all the time you of all people should know that."

"If Nicholas was giving her drugs-then..."

"_What_?" Bobbi almost shouted down the phone at me. If she wasn't awake before, she certainly was now. "Nico? Nico doesn't have anything to do with it. So what, she smoked a bit of weed. She could have got that off anyone..."

"From the centre?"

"Er duh! She was shagging anything that _moved_ down there."

"I think she cared about him..."

"Oh what do you know? You do one reading and think you're Mystic Meg. She was lucky to have Nico he shouldn't have given her the time of day."

"How did she meet him?"

"Oh, what is this about? Did she accuse Nico of something? For fuck's sake. George was an irritating little bitch, and just because she's dead, doesn't mean that I should give a shit." Bobbi regretted the words as soon as she'd spoken them. But she was too stubborn to take them back.

"Who is this guy anyway? Does he go to Thomas Moore?"

Thomas Moore was the All Boys School at the bottom of the hill from our own Secondary School. It was twice the size of our school but our teachers were always telling us that we got better GCSE results than they did; like that meant anything.

"Do you think George would have given any _Moore_ kid the time of day? Come off it...look, I'm over this conversation and if you're as ill as you made out today, you should probably go to bed too"

"Bobbi..."

"What?"

"I'm not coming back to school now so...I'll see you around?"

Bobbi hung up.

Later that night, I couldn't sleep.

_No surprises there. _

Susie and Xanthe were talking until late and then, I assumed, Xanthe stayed the night. I never heard the front door shutting from below my bedroom window-just heard talking and more talking and then shuffling.

Apart from her Scottish upbringing and fondness for having a dangerous job, who was Xanthe? How did Susie know her? And how long had the both of them known each other?

Xanthe hadn't come to our parent's funeral so either Susie hadn't wanted her there or they were only recent friends. Either way I was suspicious. Susie obviously felt comfortable enough to air our dirty laundry in front of her guest but I wasn't. And why did Xanthe take it all in her stride as if she'd always been there? I didn't like that.

I turned onto my stomach hugging a pillow. Couldn't sleep? Maybe I didn't _want_ to sleep. Psychic dreams didn't happen every night, but what where the chances of me experiencing one that included recent events? Probability? Very high. I didn't think I could cope with whatever came through the wall I built. I just wasn't prepared enough.

It was a good thing I'd phoned Bobbi. It was obvious Bobbi liked Nicholas...Nico. Her prompt defending of him had been fierce. Had she been jealous of George and Nico's relationship? Most likely.

I thought, he must have something about him this Nico, otherwise he couldn't have convinced two pretty girls from very different backgrounds to fall for him. Either that, or part of his demonic make up was charm.

George, I knew very little about. Readings can give you 'facts' about a person, snippets of their life, but rarely can they give you postcodes, details about what foods they like and which celebrity they fancy.

Bobbi had told me that George lived in Lewisham which was a stone's throw from Brockley geographically, but worlds apart. She lived with her mother, but where was her father? And which side of the gene pool had made her unnatural?

George didn't know she wasn't human. That much I had guessed. Being a sensitive was like having the Link in a way. You couldn't physically use it but it had some purpose to it. Maybe George had been attracted to Nico because some part of her indentified him as being unnatural. Maybe certain species where naturally attracted to each other? Like witches and witch hunters?

_More research Petra, you need to do more research. _

I wondered how George's mother and brother were coping in the wake of her death. Was there a difference in grief between sudden death and a long drawn out affair? I doubted it. If I had known my parents were going to die it wouldn't have made any difference in the way I'd felt about it.

What I really needed to do was pay George's family a visit. Being in the energy of George's house, amongst her things, I could pick up more information; I'd seen it done on a television show once. This male psychic had gone around touching things, and then got flashes of the past. Humans, even half-humans like George left their energy signatures everywhere. I had felt George's one in its entirety and it would be easy to pick up on it in her home.

But how was I going to do that? Susie and Elizabeth would be on duty now. I had fainted, I wasn't going to school, I had probably ticked off a thousand options towards def con one.

And how would I even get her address? Of course, sleeping on the floor below was someone who could help me do all that but Xanthe was a stranger. Xanthe probably looked people up all the time. Tracking them down was probably what she did to pay the rent when the interesting stuff had dried up...but I did have the Internet.

With the rise of social networking sites and all sorts of other pages that allowed you to find people easily, how hard could it be to get George's address? I wondered how much information there was about me!

On the other hand, if I approached Susie and said, 'I'd like to pay George's mum a visit I feel bad that I only signed a card...what do you think?' Maybe Susie would take me there.

All this thinking, all this guess work was on the assumption that George hadn't died a natural death. What evidence did I have really?

The only thing that kept me from shutting my brain down was Nico. I didn't have a wealth of knowledge about demons but his attachment to George was evil. There was nothing wrong with going on my instincts, they were powerful enough and my instincts were telling me that Nico was dangerous. I couldn't ignore it. I couldn't ignore it because George was dead and George might have died because of Nico.

On another point, what kind of guy allowed his girlfriend to take drugs anyway?

My own experience with boys was non-existent, but guys who allowed their girlfriends to indulge in drugs, were idiots. My parents never believed that my sisters and I should bother with boys until we'd graduated from University; education, education and more education.

I let go of the pillow, turning onto my side. I thought, was it a shame that Bobbi and I were no longer friends? Probably not. I didn't know much about real friendship to have a good definition of it, but Bobbi had never seemed to be bothered with me. She'd come over once and I think she'd been more impressed with the house then mum's traditional African meal and Susie's homemade apple pie.

In turn, I didn't think mum and dad had been impressed with Bobbi either. Bobbi hadn't been impolite, she just hadn't been appropriate with the questions she asked them about their jobs and money.

It was then I must have turned my brain off and fallen asleep thinking about that meal, thinking about mum's cooking.

I missed my parents so much.

I wasn't human without them.

Page **13** of **13**


	3. Chapter 1

Messenger for the Dead

**CHAPTER ONE**

Once I did a reading for a friend of a friend, at my parent's house.

I wasn't supposed to in fact my parent's had strictly forbidden it. But I guess that was the start of me doing things which were...strictly forbidden.

"Hey", said George. "Are you okay?"

I took a step back, hands outstretched. It was like a demon was coming towards me with a knife.

"Are you okay?" George continued. "Are you alright?"

This girl, this teenager who I recognised from my classes at school, was definitely attached to something evil. I used the Link, the psychic connection I had with my sisters, to try and block her out. But I had to balance it carefully; if my sisters sensed that I was in danger, they'd come running. If I didn't protect myself I'd be sucked into her energy.

It was summer in London, a Saturday. I'd been sitting waiting for my friend Bobbi to deliver her friend for a psychic reading.

I'd been sitting in the first floor living room of our three-storey house. I'd been sprawled in shorts and t-shirt on the couch, trying not to absorb anymore of the heat which was sneaking into the building.

I was well aware of what I was about to do. If my sisters ever found out about the reading, I was dead.

Hearing the front door click open, frowning when I realised there were more than several energies coming up the stairs, I wondered what the hell Bobbi had done this time.

Before I had time to get to the door, it had flung open and all these teenagers had burst through. Bobbi and George had followed after.

"Hey."

"All-right?"

"It's fucking hot in here."

"I'd love to live in a place like this..."

"Black people with money..."

"Don't be so rude..."

They'd stormed past me.

Bobbi. Beautiful dark haired and blue eyed Bobbi. She'd been wearing a stunning blue dress with a straw hat. She hadn't even said two words to me as she carried shopping bags of food into the adjoining kitchen and started getting plates and cups out.

"Oh my God, are you sick?"

George's short tanned arms were reaching towards me and I got a flash of something when she did that, but I can't always hold onto the images; they're slippery like fish.

"You don't look well." She was saying.

As George was approaching me, stepping into my atmosphere and hitting me with her vibrations, I was caught in such a mixture of fear and anxiety that for the first time in a long time, I wished my parents were still alive.

_I wished they could help me._

George was walking towards me, and the living room was getting smaller and smaller. It was making me feel sick like my whole body was rejecting rotten meat, chewing up my stomach so badly.

"Oh my God, oh my God, are you okay? Can I get you something? Oh shit!" George was talking to me like we were friends. But we were not friends.

When Bobbi had asked for this favour, when she had approached me in a class almost a week before, I'd assumed she'd bring some kid from the Youth Centre in New Cross. I'd never imagined she'd bring one of our classmates.

_George felt like death. _

"You do _not_ look well", George started.

George had broken through my defences. She'd broken through the mental shield I'd built up around me like it wasn't even there.

I swallowed.

No psychic, however 'great' they think they are is ever in complete control of their powers. In reality, you're nothing more than are a servant, a slave to the spirit world.

"Oh my God, what have I done? Bobbi, did I do something?"

Bobbi appeared at my elbow. She ignored the both of us and yelled something to one of the girls in the kitchen. I could see a red-head girl laugh and shout something back, and then Bobbi started putting plates and bowls of food on the coffee table.

"Oh my God, oh my God, are you okay? What can I _do_?" George was so lovely she was bright and bubbly and was instantly concerned for me like an old relative having a bad turn.

Bobbi was just laying things out, rolling her blue eyes. I was thinking why am I doing this then? Why did you bring her to me? I was backing into the couch so fast-I nearly toppled over it.

"Bobbi! Bobbi! Get her some water would you?" that was George, "I think it's this heat it's not right is it? This country we're not used to it are we? Are you from here? Like me, were you born here? My dad is Jamaican and _he_ can't even take it."

George was wearing a tan. She was mixed but she had a tan and I know it was a tan because I got flashes of her holiday; topless on the beach, having a drink. I usually didn't get messages like that... It was a natural tan that escaped from her jacket and reached out of her yellow dress. Everything about her was beautiful, brown hair, brown eyes, I guess that's what people meant when they said sun-kissed; you'd literally been blessed, by the sun.

_Oh God._ I was touching the couch and then like a robot I went around it sitting down. George followed, fanning me with pink fingernails. I was annoyed. Why was she sitting next to me? There was space enough on the other side.

I'd come across negative energy before but this was beyond my level of understanding. I was too much in the human realm, too much of a baby to decipher the goings on of London's underbelly.

George shouldn't have allowed this thing to attach itself to her. It wasn't right.

And then...the thought came to me as I concentrated on soothing the Link, on trying to sooth the hell out of myself. _George wasn't human._ I recognised that feeling I got when I was around people that weren't human. My sixth sense was telling me that George was like me-in some ways.

George didn't know she had a gift. She was a little more than human, but so much less than the things which crawled around London. The unnatural things I called them. They were in every borough, every pocket of the city where they could nibble away at its citizens without them knowing. I saw them sometimes, in my dreams; they would come to me in those times when I wasn't being approached by a spirit.

Spirits don't care about the messenger; they only care about the message.

"I'm doing this new diet, oh my God", George was speaking to me like we were old friends and that's what she liked doing, meeting friends for coffee, and then talking about sex.

"You don't need to because hello, look at you, but I'm not eating properly because it makes me dizzy sometimes." George laughed, it was a smoker's laugh, and it coursed up through her throat.

Bobbi was still arranging food on the glass table pushing mum's magazines to one side. Something was annoying her; more than George and her dramatic expressions, more than me and my weird gift. Bobbi looked at me and I wished I could have caught her expression but then she finally left to get the water.

I felt her rooting around in the kitchen telling the others not to make a mess, not to be so loud. She was cursing the day she ever met me_...me, Petra Wove, the sixteen year old from Southeast London who spoke to the dead, and acted as their messenger. _

But something evil was attached to George_. _What the hell was I supposed to tell her?

As if she'd heard my exact thoughts, George looked at me and sobered up. But it wasn't her it was whatever was attached to her like it was feeding off her energy. I wondered if it could see me, through her. She let her energy radiate off her tanned body in waves.

"What's wrong? Oh my God can you sense something? Oh my God oh my God it's bad isn't it?" George was panicking now. "Tell me what you see."

I was embarrassed; I hadn't been expecting all this. Bobbi should have been honest with me. I felt silly, I felt like a fraud.

"Give me a minute." I told her.

"Bobbi hurry up! I want my reading, can you hurry up please!" George shouted towards the kitchen.

The others burst back into the room. I put a mental wall up, shielding myself from their thoughts. They crowded around us, some finding seating on the three piece couch, others crouching down on the floor with food. I couldn't make their faces stick in my mind. I was doing too many things at once.

Bobbi appeared with water. She and George exchanged some words but it was too quick for me to catch. It was something like-Bobbi wanted George to leave, to give up on these things and I remembered the couch and I was sitting on it in shorts and I needed someone to open a window because London was too hot.

I must have said it out loud because someone did open the window, and then they commented on how nice my street was and how some other parts of the city were so grim. I did live in a nice street, it was old, it was English and it was very safe. My parents had chosen it because it was safe.

I didn't feel safe in that moment. I wasn't supposed to be doing a reading; especially in front of other people, _witnesses my sisters would have called them_. I'd only done it once before because, Bobbi was my friend.

Why had I become friends with Bobbi? Why had I chosen to trust her with my secret? One day Bobbi had told me that she believed in spirits. She said that when you died, you went to a place called the Land of the Dead. Bobbi was my friend, and she'd been my first attempt at doing a proper reading because I wanted to show her, really show her that I believed that too...she'd cried afterwards, after the reading. She'd gone home and cried. I'd told her stuff about her family. She thought it was scary. I didn't mean to make her cry.

"I'm so excited!" George broke through my thoughts, "you're such a mate for doing this, honestly"

_But I'm not your mate_ I thought, we don't even know each other.

And then the mobiles started appearing. Everyone started tapping away on their machines. I really wanted a phone of my own. I wasn't allowed a mobile but...what if I got into trouble one day? How strong was the Link I shared with my family? Would it help me? Would my sisters get there in time?

As they tapped away, all that interference seeps into the modern world; technology becomes part of Earth's energy and it doesn't help a reading to have all that mess. Human made mess I called it.

"Okay start!" George exclaimed.

Bobbi sat down amongst the strangers. The mobiles disappeared as quickly as they'd appeared. The room was getting dark.

Bobbi's thoughts were clear. She was unsure about the whole reading now but she didn't want to look like a fool in front of people she was trying to impress. She'd be boasting to George about what I could do. George had only made friends with her to prove her wrong.

Why couldn't anyone be honest with each other?

"Do you need my date of birth?" George asked.

"No."

"I had a reading done in Kingston once." George started to explain. "Just by accident this woman was walking past me and she grabbed my arm and said I have a message for you. Just like that. She needed my name, date of birth and the time I was born."

"Are you sure she wasn't scamming you?" That was Bobbi.

"Shh!" someone said.

"Okay." I said.

Pink fingernails went to George's face. "It was so weird." She wanted to laugh. "It was just the weirdest thing I have ever come across." George was uncomfortable, she watched me swallow my water in one go. She was uneasy with me but she didn't think I was a bad person.

"So, you do want me to give it to you?" George was pleading with her eyes and not her mouth.

"No. I don't need any of that stuff." I said. "Okay, George."

"Yeah?"

"This boy you really like. You know what I'm going to say about him."

The room erupted. All the boys and girls started hollering with laughter and wolf whistling like a chat show audience. That was all I needed.

All that energy coming to the surface was overwhelming. A cold becomes a flu becomes a virus made new by going back over and over again. That's what George was doing. She kept breaking up with this boy and going back to him like she was addicted. She put her hand to her chest and it was dramatic but, that was where he was hurting her.

George told everyone to be quiet. I was making her cry but she needed to. I didn't have tissues no-one did, so she stemmed the flow with her hands. Someone offered to go to the toilet for her but George refused. Someone else asked how many toilets I had.

Then _I_ silenced them all.

"Oh my God." Said George.

Did they know who they pray to? Humans? What had been made and re-shaped into ghastly things.

"I love him." George said.

"He's no good for you." I said. "He has a lot of darkness in his head just, a darkness which moves down further and further. You feel it. You feel it all the time."

George touched my bare arm saying, "He understands me. He treats me really well."

"No." I said.

"He does he really does."

"That's not what I meant." _Let go of my arm_. "He just appeared one day and now your path is changing its like you don't even know which way is up anymore" She let go of my arm. _Thank God._

Then the thought came to me slowly...George's mother was just as bad as she was but...she didn't exercise her emotions with men; she didn't want them, not after George's dad. George's dad was still the love of her life. I was getting the idea that the arguing between mother and daughter was because of freedom. George needed her freedom, she insisted on it. She wanted to get a Saturday job so that she could do her own thing...and then... there were drugs... no wonder George couldn't see this boy for what he was. George was taking drugs and the drugs wouldn't let her see him.

_He was a_ _demon_.

"Do you see a future for us?" George's question was quiet.

Whispers were going around the room.

"Get his energy out from under you just slowly, move it away from you day by day. This is not what you should be doing." I told her.

"Is he cheating on me?"

"This is not a relationship, not the way you want it. I don't see other girls. He doesn't do that." I paused and then it came out. "You want his _baby_?"

I shouldn't have said it but the thought came to me so quickly. I just got rid of it.

"No one knows about _that_ Jesus Christ."

The room erupted again. Food was being spilt. What was wrong with these people? Why couldn't they eat properly?

George was getting excited now she was getting excited over a baby that didn't exist but she thought she was pregnant once and she was feeling her stomach in the shower like a new mum and then she got her period. She got her period and then she cried.

If I could get a fix on the boy, I could be of some help I thought. Poor lamb. I sounded like my mum. Poor lamb. George was the sacrificial lamb and this boyfriend of hers was the slaughterer.

"He's not interested. He's just not interested." I kept telling her.

"Okay so he's not ready?"

"Your meeting...I don't think it was by accident."

"Oh my God so-I always thought and I said this to mum that it was fate or something."

"You need to trust your instincts. He must have set this up somehow..."

"He wanted to be with me." George cut me off.

"What does he call himself?" I asked her.

"Nicholas."

She nodded. George liked saying his name, as if it belonged to her. She looked at me for a very long time like she thought I was jealous of the many splendid things they got up to. She thought I was pretty but- that I didn't know it.

I needed another glass of water.

It was summer in the city. I should have been outside with the Land of the Living. It was a Saturday and I was sixteen and I should have been at the cinema or bowling or doing something other than opening a connection to the spirit world. I wasn't going to do this again. It wasn't nice and I promised my family.

George wanted to know more but I wanted to get out from under her and get her talking about something else. If George could see that she had other options, I would feel better when I was in bed later that night, when Bobbi was scratching me off her friends list, when my sisters came in, one by one. I would feel better.

"Tell me about my career." George demanded.

George sat back on the couch. I didn't want her to do that. She moved as if I was going to join her but I didn't. She crossed her legs, a power move, she was feasting on it; she chewed on her lower.

And then George was closing down, but she didn't realise that she wasn't in control of her behaviour. She didn't realise that this boy had sunk his teeth into her organs and was making his own connections.

"You're very creative and you know it but, it's the laziness that gets us all in the end."

"There's no point being an artist", George was getting angry. "It doesn't pay. Maybe I should go to sleep one day and wake up and make a fortune like Tracey Emin and then everyone will get off my back!"

"You'll earn money from it." I said.

"What about my family?"

"You blame your mother for your pain. The family is pulling apart and it's moving away from you. You want it to be like it was."

"Can I get what I want?"

"You get what you _need_."

George was unhappy with me. You get that sometimes, people who want the world and you show them the earth, the actual earth and the minute bit of dirt that lives under their fingernails. To humans, I'm the demon. I'm a pervert who can see their sex lives and tell them where the dead tread and what gems they left in the attic, _which don't belong to you_, but you want them anyway.

Death doesn't mean you're no longer human. It doesn't mean that you're born again or that you can suddenly forgive your daughter for dating a black man. It's just- another doorway.

"What else can you see?"

"Please be more specific. I will get a rush of things and then nothing will make sense."

George sat forward again.

She wanted to make eye contact with me like we were friends. Humans use their eyes to implore you, but it's your energy, those electrons that roam around you protecting you like a shield which are more powerful.

George's eyes were brown and they hinted at changing colour when she was really angry.

"I'm worried about my brother." George tried to hide the fact that she was pouting. "Tell me about my brother."

And so I did. I told her that her brother was fine and that he was just concerned about _her_. I told her that his marriage was shaky and ultimately, it would be up to him to fix it or not. I told her that her grandmother watched over her and she wanted the fighting with her mother to stop.

George wanted me to go back to Nicholas, what else did I see? Did he love her? Could he love her? I cannot predict human behaviour, I am shown the best possible pathways but these change depending on human choice. I didn't think Nicholas was human. That's what made it so difficult to give George any answers.

But I didn't tell her this. I don't think I really told her anything. It was Bobbi who interrupted us, saying something about this whole thing boring her. Bobbi wanted to leave. She got up and started literally take food out of people's hands, depositing rubbish in the kitchen.

Someone demanded a reading of their own. I refused.

The other teenagers didn't want to go but the boys started helping Bobbi tidy. Half an hour later, when my stomach returned to normal, it was decided that they would all go to the Youth Centre in New Cross; catch a train.

As they were leaving Bobbi looked at me and then tossed me the spare key before exiting the living room last.

I think Bobbi and I were both happy to be parted from each other. I followed them all down the steps, making sure they didn't stop off somewhere and hide. I couldn't have any trace of them in the house, my sisters would kill me.

George didn't even say goodbye.

When I finally shut the door on them, I'd never been so grateful of my own space.

I meditated in my bedroom afterwards; a deep meditation which allowed me to build up the wall again and stop any more messages from coming through. As a psychic, you need to rid yourself of the connections you make with other souls...especially ones so intense.

I never wanted to feel that darkness again that confusion. How could George live with that evil attached to her?

And then I thought; _I've done a really bad thing._

Two weeks later-George went to sleep.

Two weeks later, George went to sleep, George went to sleep and she never woke up.

Page **7** of **7**


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